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Noida and its adjoining area have emerged as the national centre of big time crime and murder. Located on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, Noida is adjacent to district Ghaziabad in UP. In the two months before June 2008 according to the police 46 children have gone missing from Ghaziabad. A class IV student, Arjun, who disappeared over six months ago returned and described how he had been kidnapped and taken to Gujarat. According to him along with other children he was fed and made to work. Periodically, blood was taken from the children. One day he claims to have witnessed children being 'hacked' to pieces. He escaped and fled back home. The police were dismissive of his account. The number of missing children in Ghaziabad was unearthed by a social organization, Bharat Nawjawan Sabha, which extracted the official admission through an application filed under the Right to Information Act. Kapil, a key member of the organization that surveyed the area, said: "Our hunch is that there is a human organ trafficking racket at work here."

Preceding this there was a spate of startling crimes in Noida. The notorious Nithari murders in Noida remain unexplained. Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant, Kohli, were implicated in the mass murder of over 30 victims, mostly children. None of the police theories for the motive of the murders carried conviction to survive. The police theory of cannibalism was discarded after the servant vomited, unable to eat human flesh when being tested. The police alleged that the servant was a psychopath who murdered call girls after procuring them for Pandher. But why were so many victims children? One child who miraculously escaped their clutches accused two maidservants serving Pandher of unsuccessfully trying to lure her. If the servant was a psychopath why were the maidservants complicit in the crime? Where are the maidservants now? Earlier they were missing. The CBI investigation revealed that the Noida police were systematically bribed by Pandher to protect his servant. One woman police officer was dismissed and faces prosecution. Was she the lone recipient of bribes or were there other bribed colleagues in the Noida police?

This scribe had pointed out that in China after initial denials the government had admitted the existence of a well organized organ trade racket exposed by a doctor serving the Army. The clients for this lucrative global trade are in the West and elsewhere. In Pandher's house the police had found organs and pieces of flesh packed in polythene bags. The bones and skeletons of the victims were found in adjoining drains. According to initial reports the police also found surgical instruments in the house.

Even as the investigation of these ghastly mass murders was continuing, the kidney racket being operated from Noida was unearthed. A spurious surgeon, Dr Kumar, was illegally extracting kidneys from poor victims and selling them to rich donors. He was aided by a Chinese nurse resident in Manipur who was detained by the police for questioning. Attempting to escape, Dr Kumar fled to Nepal where he was apprehended. Earlier the doctor had run a clinic indulging in this illegal activity in Mumbai. He had been exposed by authorities. Subsequently he sold his clinic to the relative of a powerful politician. He shifted his operations to Noida. In Noida he was seen by witnesses to regularly visit the house of Pandher at dusk. The Noida residents who saw these visits informed the police. That case is still being investigated although the Dr Kumar-Pandher link has not been commented upon by the police.

Currently attention is hogged by the murder in Noida of a 14 year old girl and a manservant in the house of a dentist, Dr Talwar. The police have held the father of the girl for questioning. The police explanations of the crime have been varied and self-contradictory. The servant had reportedly told a neighbour that he feared for his life before he was murdered. His body was discovered a day after the girl's murder although both are thought to have been murdered around the same time. The parents were in a room adjoining the girl's bedroom when she was murdered. Another former servant of the Talwar household had also reportedly confided to a neighbour that he feared for his life. He too is said to have been found dead in a canal (though now there seems to be some contradiction about the identity of the dead body). The police seem to rule out foul play. The CBI has held Dr Talwar's compounder on suspicion of committing the murder. The police have not advanced any motive. But now the CBI is hinting that the murders were "pre-meditated". Was it to silence Aarushi and Hemraj who knew something? If so, what did they know? The compounder is from Nepal where kidney racketeer Dr Kumar fled in his bid to evade arrest. But he also managed to allege in front of cameras on June 10 that "investigating agencies and doctors were colluding to frame him" in an attempt to save the father of the slain girl.

See the sequence of events, the proximity of the crimes committed, the new information about missing children in adjoining Ghaziabad. And the involvement of medical professionals. Does not the suspicion about organ trade voiced by the Bharat Nawjawan Sabha deserve serious consideration?